Computer and other electronic devices generally require a medium in which digital data can be stored and retrieved. Data storage devices come in a variety of forms and serve a variety of purposes. These devices can be broken down into two general categories: solid state and non-solid state storage devices.
Non-solid state storage devices include devices that contain moving parts. Some typical non-solid state storage devices are hard disc drives, CD/RW drives and discs, DVD/R/RW drives and discs, floppy discs tape drives and probe memory devices. These data storage devices move one or more media surfaces and/or the associated data head relative to one another to position the data head relative to a desired location for writing and/or reading data on the media. In disc drives for example, data is stored on a disc that rotates at an essentially constant velocity. By moving the head over the rotating disc, all memory locations or sectors of the disc can be accessed.
Solid state memory devices differ from non-solid state data storage devices in that they typically have no moving parts. One example of solid state memory is the flash type of EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), which is used primarily for easy and fast information storage in such devices as digital cameras, home video game counsels and personal digital assistance.
Due to frequent loading and unloading of data, computer operating systems that store information on a hard drive end up having the different segments or blocks of data associated with the same file dispersed non-contiguously located on the drive media. This leads to inefficient and slow reads of the associated file, for example due to mechanical movement required to access the multiple file segments, and the need for the operating system to send requests to read the data in small segments. To address such inefficiencies, the operating system will occasionally implement a defragmentation operation designed to relocate these related non-contiguous data segments such that they are contiguous.
Embodiments described herein provide solutions to these and other problems, and offer other advantages over the prior art.